


georgia, georgia, he has beautiful bones

by nosecoffee



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Post canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:34:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22159444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: (and he never lies or picks up his phone)*Boris reappears in Theo’s life five months after Amsterdam, when Theo’s on his third trial of antidepressants.He says Theo’s name likeTee-ohwhich he’s never noticed before, because Boris never actually says his real name. And if it weren’t for all the love confessions he’d already spouted there on the doorstep, that would be how Theo knew he was serious.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 26
Kudos: 394





	georgia, georgia, he has beautiful bones

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Georgia by Phoebe Bridgers.
> 
> Yeah, Phoebe Bridgers is just sad and indie enough for me to connect her songs with the Goldfinch, So now this is happening
> 
> Y’all should know that as is my tradition with writing fic, I generally write two and then move on to a different fandom. This being the second fic I’ve written for tgf I do not know when we’ll be seeing each other again. ;) lmao enjoy

_georgia, georgia, i_ _love your son_

_and when he gets older_

_he might be the one_

  
  


So he assumes that will be the end of it. They’ve righted the wrong from long ago, there’s no reason now to stay, no reason to ever speak again. They live very different lives, are far too alike to stay in close proximity for too long, lest disaster occur.

Theo already knows Boris would kill for him, and he has. He’d do anything for Theo. He knows it goes the same for him. Theo has killed for him. If he stays too much longer it might happen again, so much blood on his hands, far too much blood that will not wash out.

Boris, Hobie, Pippa - they may not be dead but their blood still stains him. Theo needs to get out, get away from himself until he feels clean, get high and out of his mind for a long moment so he can settle back into that incognito life, that person he is not who he has become.

The man marrying Kitsey next week. If she even knows he’s alive.

Theo assumes that’s the end of it. He’ll get on a plane, Boris will toast to a safe journey, and hopefully their paths will never cross again.

Theo gets on a plane to New York, and hails a cab to take him to Hobie’s. And when he gets there he breaks down. He just can’t stop.

No matter what he does, the hopeless yawning void in his chest where he supposes his love is supposed to be roars at its emptiness, and Theo can only collapse in Hobie’s arms.

Just by virtue of overdosing, he’s begun to detox, and Hobie helps him through it.

“Kitsey called,” he says, and Theo is sitting half naked in the shower, trying not to set off another round of dry heaving. “She’s coming to see you.”

Theo can’t stop it. She appears only an hour later, the picture of a carefully framed socialite - _ice queen,_ Boris’ voice snickers in his head - and stops in the doorway, scrutinising him. Theo wishes she could fucking love him, but it’s clear by the way she seems to be unwilling to touch him with a ten foot pole that that will never happen.

“We’ll push the wedding back by a week,” she says, crouching by the tub, a thin smile on her face. “Mother has connections, she’ll help.”

“No,” he croaks. “Don’t bother. It’s done.”

That’s all he wants, for all this to be done, so he doesn’t have to worry, so he doesn’t have to think about it anymore. Never mind that he’s letting Mrs. Barbour down, never mind that he was supposed to love Kitsey. It just hurts too much.

“What?” She asks, tone innocent, but it’s clear she knows what he’s saying. Theo wonders if she’ll marry Tom Cable, or find someone more sensible, more _Theo_ to bring home. He wonders if she’ll even give in.

“I can’t do this, Kitsey. I know you don’t love me, if I’m honest I can’t love you. We’re better off apart. Just call the wedding off.”

“Theo,” she says, and then stops, as if she was waiting for him to fight back, but he doesn’t. They sit in silence. She gazes down at him, eyes judging him, committing the moment to memory, and he sees her relent. “Alright.”

And she leaves.

The detox only worsens from there, shivers and withdrawal, ache for a high, sleeplessness and self imposed starvation, since he knows all too well from his recent vomiting just how stomach bile burns the back of his throat.

He lies in exile in Welty’s old room and floats in and out of consciousness, dreaming of the Met and Pippa’s sticky kiss, of Boris’ dried up pool in Vegas, of the way he’d held Theo up in his arms in Amsterdam, they way he’d begged him to walk, to come back, _don’t leave._

Theo was barely conscious when Boris found him - he thought he was dead when Boris burst in, he truly thought he’d died - and it was only after he’d fully woken up that he realised Boris was crying. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d ever seen Boris cry. It didn’t quite make sense. Boris was one to take things on the chin, _çest la vie, carpe diem, who fucking cares about my lot in life?_

Crying over Theo’s overdose, that was something that stuck with him.

When Theo finally sobers up, it’s all he can think about. He apologises to Hobie, who of course will not hear a word of it, and then goes right back to work, a more disheveled version of the disguised self he’d built, a little more honest, a little more willing to be tired and gutted, and proud of the fact. He does not think of Kitsey and Mrs. Barbour and Tom Cable. He does not think of Pippa and Everett, in London. He does not think of Boris in Antwerp, wondering if he’s shooting up, if he’s dead, if he’s back to that wife he mentioned, the kids he supposedly has.

Theo wonders how he can hate what his life has become at twenty-five. Is this not supposed to be his prime? His fucking twenties, and he’s moping in an antique store with the only father figure in his life that mattered, hands shaking for a drink, a cigarette, a line of coke, because he had such a fucked up adolescence that he never learned how to deal with his problems like a normal fucking human being.

He makes the executive decision to go into therapy. It takes a few tries to find someone who doesn’t make him feel like throttling them or offing himself, someone who doesn’t just nod and _hm_ when he says it was definitely his mother’s death that prompted this eight year downward spiral into addiction and unhealthy coping mechanisms. When he says sex doesn’t seem to mean anything to him, and never has; when he says he’s not sure if he loves in the right way, because his love just seems to be destructive.

Boris reappears in Theo’s life five months after Amsterdam, when Theo’s on his third trial of antidepressants. The first one made him lose his already dwindling appetite. The second made him numb and morose. So far this one only makes him feel hungry all the damn time, but it’s a fucking start. He’d asked his therapist if giving pills to a recovering addict was a good idea and she’d laughed.

“You have someone to look after you, Theo, someone to help regulate. If you feel yourself backsliding, you go to them. This is what we’re trying to build here. Trust that they’ll take care of you.”

And Hobie does a fine job of regulating him - he reminds Theo to take his pills, and after he does he hides the bottle until the next morning - but he’s too considerate of Theo’s privacy, too faithful to the mindset that Theo can handle himself. He didn’t even ask many questions when Theo was detoxing. The only person who’s actually taken charge of Theo’s care was Boris and that’s honestly ridiculous. 

His therapist thought Theo’s unwillingness to actually let anyone in, his insistence that he can handle himself just fine, was deeply rooted in a messy cocktail of toxic masculinity and childhood trauma. She said that it was probably the loss of both his parents in quick succession, and the lack of warmth from any later primary carers had caused Theo to withdraw into himself and wall his feelings inside, too.

“Now is the time for making inroads, Theo, letting go of old coping mechanisms and building new, better ones. You can’t rely on one person to take care of you, especially when that person isn’t there a majority of the time.”

She has a very valid point, because Boris is in Antwerp and would in no way drop everything to watch Theo’s slow return to some healthy semblance of normal.

Except that he does. He turns up on the doorstep one evening and says, “I could not stand the idea of you wasting your life on someone you do not love and who says they will never love you - though I do not know how this is possible - when I could easily come here and love you, and I am so tired of letting my love for you eat itself in an attempt to be rid of it. I have to love you, Theo. I do not have a choice.”

He says Theo’s name like _Tee-oh_ which he’s never noticed before, because Boris never actually says his real name. And if it weren’t for all the love confessions he’d already spouted there on the doorstep, that would be how Theo knew he was serious.

  
  


_and sometimes in the pouring rain_

_he will fall in the mud and get back up_

_again_

  
  


They don’t talk much in the hours that follow. Theo takes him up to the kitchen and lets Boris make the tea, even though Theo said he would, and they don’t talk much.

Theo does say that he’s five months clean. He says he’s seeing a therapist, taking antidepressants, sleeping through the night without a bump to knock him out. He says that things with Kitsey are done, and honestly anything he had with Pippa is also done.

And Boris listens. So really Theo does all the talking, and Boris leaves all his words, his love confessions, on the doorstep outside. Theo talks until he has nothing left to tell him. It’s very strange. Even when they barely knew each other, when Boris had invited him around for beer and _S.O.S. Iceberg,_ Boris has been the first to break the silence, to fill up the air with whatever he was thinking at the time, whatever he thought Theo might find interesting.

They sit in silence, cold tea in mugs in their hands, untouched, abandoned. Theo doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know how to process what Boris said outside.

He gets up from the table and walks down the hall, and hears Boris follow, slowly, as he enters the bathroom. Boris stands in the doorway, scrutinising the scene before him. He looks better than he did in Amsterdam.

He was thinner then, more gaunt, sleepless bruises under his eyes, track marks all over his arm. Now, he follows suit as Theo pulls his sweater over his head, shucking off his coat and shirt. He’s filled out more, his ribs not so visible, his face not so angular, his eyes clear of blemishes. Even the track marks have vanished.

The bath fills up loudly behind Theo, but he can’t look away from Boris. It’s like he’s stepped on a land mine and lifting his foot will cause the explosion, like he’s forever trapped in the center of something, like if he breaks the eye contact or takes a step this is all over.

Boris makes the choice for him, walking past to turn the taps off, the bath full, bubbles scattered across the surface of the water. Boris touches him, just his shoulder, turns him, “Potter, do not waste water.”

Moving, lifting his foot from the land mine causes no great explosion or disaster. Just Boris gesturing to the tub, his hand still on Theo’s shoulder, a support.

Theo gets fully undressed and into the bath, and Boris sits on the windowsill, the window cracked open, and smokes a cigarette. He tells Theo of his divorce with his wife, the business trips that took him all over Europe, the way he’d gone cold turkey and spent two months in a rehab centre just to stop the shaking.

“And all that time I think of you,” he says, and flicks the cigarette butt out the window, closing it right behind him, and muttering something in Russian about the cold. “I wonder how you are.”

“You could have called,” Theo says. _I wanted you to call,_ he doesn’t say.

“Is not right for us,” Boris says, hopping down from the windowsill. “We are not so clear. We can only be vague, da?”

He’s standing there in his suit pants and socks, looking pale and anxious, just as he had in Amsterdam. “What if I were to be straightforward?”

He barks out a laugh, the singular _ha!_ Theo only attributes to him. Before reconnecting, whenever he heard someone laugh like that he’d twist around to look for them, sure it was Boris. “I would not believe is you, Potter,” Boris tells him, wryly.

“You were.” Theo points out.

“Hm?”

“Straightforward. Today. When you arrived.”

His mouth downturns, his white squares of teeth shining in the low lighting. “Did not want you to turn me away.”

“I would never.”

“You would.” Boris retorts, immediately. “Is fine. I understand.”

Theo sits up more, the water rocking as he disturbs it. “You think badly of me.” It’s an accusation.

“You _treat me_ badly.” Boris tells him, and sits on the edge of the bath, poking at the thinning bubbles. “As if I am _stranger,_ ruining your life.”

Theo swallows at the lump in his throat. “I was in a bad place when we last saw each other.”

“So was I.”

“Boris.”

“Da, what?”

“Come here.”

Boris slides into the bath easily, and the water laps over the edge, slapping onto the tiles below. Neither of them wince or look. Boris sits down the opposite end of the bath, making Theo pull up his knees to make room. It’s almost like he’s not really there, like Theo’s imagining him and the water displacement he’s caused. Like he is a phantom, a memory.

“Tell me you mean this.”

“Of course I do.”

“I can never tell. You do not tell me everything, you hold things back.”

“Wouldn’t you? _Don’t_ you?”

“Is different.”

“I love you.” Boris leans forward, between Theo’s bender knees, and kisses him, pulling one hand from the water to hold Theo’s cheek. More water slides over the edge of the bath.

  
  


_and if you find me_

_will you know me?_

_will you take me?_

_or will you fall?_

  
  


There’s a lot of things they don’t say, even though they trade words as much as kisses, that night. They get out of the bath when it gets too cold, and Theo has to loan Boris some pants because his are too wet to be sitting around in.

Theo, being a good few inches taller, takes great pleasure in seeing Boris roll up the hems of the pants he’s borrowed to be able to walk around in them. Then, Boris makes a new batch of tea, and takes over the dinner Theo attempts to cook when he burns it too badly.

“Let me take care of you,” are his words, and the meaning behind them winds Theo so much he has to sit down.

They eat it in the kitchen, talking with their mouths full, and Theo watches Boris come back alive under the warm lighting, making jokes, telling stories, without having to be high to find them funny.

When their dishes are empty, and their lips are swollen and red, Theo leads Boris into his bedroom, not bothering to turn on the lights. Boris takes his glasses off for him, he kisses Theo’s neck and the little bit of his chest his sweater shows. In the street light from outside, Boris’ dark curls shimmer like oil on water, iridescent, slick, and when he ducks his head, his knees finding purchase on the rug on the floor, his eyes shine, his pupils blown wide.

He takes Theo all the way into his mouth, to the back of his throat, and he holds Theo’s hips tight against the mattress. It seems a shame to mess up the carefully tousled curls on his head, but Theo can do nothing but wind his fingers through them and whisper Boris’ name to the silent air of the room.

Boris pulls off to kiss his thighs when he loses his breath, and Theo pulls him up his body, off the floor. Boris jerks him the rest of the way off, kissing Theo with everything he has. Theo returns the favour only a few minutes later, and it’s the first time he sees Boris’ face contort so beautifully when he knows he’ll remember it. None of the times before, sweaty and messy in Vegas, mean anything anymore, not when Boris let him have this sober, is giving him everything by being here.

Boris closes his eyes. His back arches and his moan becomes cut off little exhales as he comes in Theo’s grip. Theo just watches, entranced by the way he looks under the orange light from the street, the way he slowly catches his breath, and peers up at Theo through his lashes after a moment.

Theo goes to the bathroom and grabs a washcloth to clean them up with, and when they’re done they huddle under the cover, fingers interlaced, legs tangled, Theo’s forehead pressed to Boris’ collarbone.

It’s the best sleep he’s had for ages.

  
  


_here is my day plan_

_here’s my new machine_

_he’s a fine new addition, so young and so clean_

  
  


The next morning, he meets Hobie in the kitchen. Hobie watches as Theo takes his antidepressants with a sip of water. Then he picks up the bottle and goes back to his room to hide them, and every time it never fails to hurt that Hobie has to do that.

When he returns, though, there’s a slight smile on his face. “What?” Theo asks, suspiciously.

Hobie just raises his eyebrows and hums to himself as he goes about making his toast.

“No, seriously, what is it?”

“Oh nothing. I was just wondering if you knew about the naked man in your bedroom.”

Theo reddens. He left his bedroom door open in his barely conscious daze. “Ah.”

“So you are aware? Wonderful, I’ll assume you put him there. I’m going down to the workshop, come get me if you need anything.”

Theo nods, still blushing, and waits until Hobie’s whistling fades, two floors below. Then he goes to his bedroom, and stops in the doorway. There’s Boris, alright, bare as the day he was born, on his stomach, twisted in the sheets. It’s awfully poetic and a little Hollywood the way he’s smothered himself in the white and moss green bed clothes, one leg tucked under the coverlet, the other thrown over it gracelessly, baring one smooth ass cheek and the length of his pale and freckle-mottled back to the early morning light.

It’s obvious he’s awoken to find Theo missing and just turned over to go back to sleep, because when Theo left Boris was curled into him, barely visible at all over the sheets. As it is now, he’s mostly diagonal, and hogging as much of the mattress as possible. Theo probably shouldn’t find the image so endearing, but it’s Boris so how can he not?

Despite the fact he’s dressed for work, he climbs into bed with him, and Boris peers up at him with furrowed eyebrows when Theo pokes his shoulder enough to wake him. “Where is fire?” He grumbles, rubbing both his eyes and turning onto his back.

“Hobie saw your ass,” Theo replies, throwing an arm over Boris’ waist and dropping his cheek onto his chest. He can feel his heart against his chin.

“Good.” Boris huffs and Theo snorts. “Old poofter understands why I am here.”

He doesn’t really want to go downstairs right now. Not when Boris is right here, because he is never here. Hobie would probably understand if he asked to keep the store closed today, but he also couldn’t escape his sly grinning either.

“Thinking very loud.” Boris says, and Theo feels his fingers begin to card through Theo’s hair. “Tell me.”

“No,” Theo says instead, and Boris tugs slightly on his hair.

“Well, okay. Did I tell you I wanted to follow you from Antwerp the moment you left? Hm?” Theo shakes his head, gazing across Boris’ pale ribs. “I would have if I did not have so much to fix. Everything with Astrid and the children, my own addictions, people - bad people - who wanted things from me, I think I do not have to tell you what I mean, you already know. And whole time I think I could not let you go back and be alone. I was scared I would hear in a month you are dead in bathtub somewhere, because I was not there to save you. Or worse, that I would hear nothing and turn up like I did yesterday, only to find you had been dead for ages.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” _I wouldn’t do that to you,_ is probably what he should have said. _I wouldn’t do that to Hobie,_ is what pops into his head first. So Theo just cuts himself off and acts like that’s all there is to say.

“You would,” Boris says anyway. His fingernails, blunt and bitten down as they are, brush against Theo’s scalp as he absently continues to run his hands through his hair. “You just knew so in Vegas. One bad trip and you lie in sand, telling me leave you to die, melodramatic Potter.”

Theo frowns, not recognising the scene Boris describes. “I don’t remember that.”

Boris’ chest convulses in a single laugh, the _ha!_ Theo’s so used to, and he murmurs, “Sometimes I think you remember nothing at all.”

It’s an oddly bitter thing to say. Theo swallows and then says, “So you sobered up, divorced your wife, and left your business in Europe - for me?”

“Self centred?” Boris grumbles. Theo turns his head and bites one of his ribs. “Motherfuck.”

“Answer the question, dickhead.”

“Was all self destructive anyway. Going down bad road,” he responds, reaching down to the place where Theo bit him, but instead of soothing it, presses the pad of his thumb to Theo’s lips. “And you would use those things about me - my wife, the heroin - you would torture yourself with them, the way I used your bird, your ice queen, your pills to hurt myself.”

It’s such a clear way of explaining it. It’s true that when Theo returned to New York, he thought of the blonde woman in the picture on Boris’ chest of drawers, at his flat in Antwerp, how he’d left so she could still have a husband. Theo had used it as an excuse to stop himself from contacting Boris many times.

“I end all this because I fucking hate when we use each other’s problems to destroy ourselves. We crush ourselves, say is our fault the other is fucked up.” He says that they are vague, but here he is spouting too many truths in a row to be healthy. He’s reading their souls like lines on Theo’s palm. “And we _do_. Is part of who we are, who we became. We are people who live on being tortured, masochistic, I know.”

Theo sits up and looks down at Boris, splayed against the mattress, blinking blearily up at him. “You’ve really thought about this,” he comments, softly.

Boris shrugs a little, in that Slavic, one-fluid-movement way, and sits up as well. “Had to convince myself I was right. You and I, we have made many bad decisions together, and apart. I would not have come here if it would hurt you.”

“Boris.”

“You know that I love you. I did not say enough yesterday. I did not say enough at all. But I love you, Potter.”

“I love you, too.”

“Good,” And when Boris kisses him there, it is not soft, it is not sweet, it is a selfish, taking kiss, as though Boris is scared Theo will take it back. In return, Theo pushes him onto his back again, and takes control of the kiss, moving down his neck. “I would be upset if you didn’t.”

  
  


_he came up through the water_

_without a sound_

_with my back to the shoreline i dreamt that he drowned_

  
  


“You said in Vegas that you wanted to go to California. Wanted to be somewhere warm, on a beach. Do you remember?”

“I do. But you know, you are warm enough for me.”

  
  
  


_and if i breathe you, will it kill me?_

_will you have me, or watch me fall?_

_if i fix you, will you hate me?_

_and would you fuck this and let us fall?_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Please consider leaving me a comment, I’d really like that. Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee where I post memes and scream into the void about tgf. Once again, thanks for reading.


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